In the early hours of the expanding war between the United States and Iran, a devastating airstrike leveled a girls’ elementary school in southern Iran, killing scores of children and raising urgent questions about whether U.S. forces unintentionally struck a civilian site while targeting nearby military facilities.
The deadly strike killed more than 170 people and left witnesses to find the severed limbs of children in the rubble. The strike hit the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in the city of Minab on Feb. 28, the first day of coordinated U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iranian military targets. Iranian officials say more than 160 people were killed—most of them young schoolchildren—making it one of the deadliest incidents of the conflict so far.
U.S. officials have not formally accepted responsibility for the attack, but evidence from satellite imagery, eyewitness accounts, and preliminary military assessments suggests American forces were targeting a nearby Iranian military site when the school was struck.
The school sits in Hormozgan province near facilities used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including a naval brigade compound. According to experts reviewing satellite images, several precision-guided munitions struck buildings within the compound at the same time the school was destroyed.
The U.S. military has acknowledged that it conducted strikes in the area as part of operations targeting Iranian naval assets near the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts say the region falls squarely within the U.S. zone of operations during the early days of the campaign.
Satellite photos reviewed by independent experts show a crescent-shaped blast pattern across the school’s roof, damage consistent with an air-delivered munition rather than ground fighting. Much of the building was reduced to rubble.
Pentagon officials say the incident is under investigation. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. military does not deliberately target civilian sites and is reviewing whether intelligence failures or targeting errors may have played a role.
Under U.S. military procedures, an internal assessment is typically launched only when there is a preliminary indication that American forces may have been involved in an attack causing civilian casualties.
Some U.S. officials speaking anonymously have said the strike was “likely” carried out by American forces, though no final determination has been announced.
Images from the aftermath—showing destroyed classrooms and rows of freshly dug graves—have sparked condemnation from humanitarian groups and international organizations.
The United Nations and human rights organizations have called for an independent investigation, warning that attacks on schools and children could violate international humanitarian law if civilian protections were not adequately considered.
Legal experts note that even if military targets were located nearby, schools are considered protected civilian sites under the laws of war. Any strike that causes excessive civilian casualties relative to the military objective could be deemed unlawful.
The bombing occurred during the opening phase of a broader U.S.-Israel campaign against Iranian military infrastructure. The widening conflict has already caused hundreds of civilian deaths across the region, according to humanitarian monitors.
For families in Minab, the tragedy has turned a small coastal city into a symbol of the war’s human cost. Funeral processions for the young victims stretched through the streets as grieving parents carried photographs of their daughters—children who had gone to school that morning and never returned home.
